Thursdays are the weekly media sessions with the Detroit Lions coordinators instead of head coach Dan Campbell. Offensive guru Ben Johnson, defensive mastermind Aaron Glenn and special teams maven Dave Fipp all have distinct styles and relationships with how they handle their media sessions.
This Thursday’s was full of useful nuggets and tidbits from all three, as is usually the case. All three are candid, fairly open and seem to enjoy the interactions–especially Fipp.
Fipp is known for his lengthy, meandering answers in his press conferences–and even in just general conversation. I had a very engaging 10-minute briefing with Fipp during training camp that consisted of exactly two questions and answers, so this latest one is true to Fipp’s form.
This time, Fipp began by giving a meaty response about the utter unimportance of DVOA, a metric originally created by Football Outsiders. It’s self-definition,
“DVOA measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent.”
After noting how the special teams DVOA metrics overvalues return yards, Fipp turned his attention to Pro Football Focus, or PFF. It’s probably best to just let you read it…(as transcribed by the Lions media relations):
“So, the next one is PFF, and I’ve got two good stories for you on PFF, and it’s the PFF grades. And this came up this week again because somebody in the building came to me and said, ‘Hey, there is this player, he’s playing really well for you guys.’ And I’m like, ‘Who said that?’ They said, ‘Well, PFF.’ And I was like, ‘OK.’ Well, here’s two stories for you on PFF. Number one is, I get on a plane, I think I was going to the Combine, this is years ago, and when I sit down, this guy sitting next to me says, ‘Hey, are you a coach for – ‘ I think I was with Philly at the time. I’m like, ‘Yeah,’ And he’s like, ‘Ah, I’m a grader of PFF.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ He was a young guy, I’m like, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ The guy had never coached football, never played football and he’s grading our players on who played good and who played bad.
So, I’m like, ‘Wow.’ So, the PFF grade, like, OK. And the next thing on that is, we play a game at the Giants and the special teams coach at the time or assistant there at the time was a good friend of mine, and he came up to me before the game and he said, ‘Hey man, just so you know, this player –‘ I can’t say his name, he’s actually in the media nowadays, but he said, ‘This player, he’s the best rated front-line blocker on kickoff return in the National Football League.’ And I was like, ‘Who said that?’ And he was like, ‘PFF.’ And then I was like, ‘PFF?’
I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I’m like, ‘Number one, this guy’s like the worst blocker on our team.’ But number two, we put him on these matchups on the backside of the return every week where he’s blocking basically a guy that doesn’t need to be blocked, but we kind of have to block him just in case. So, he wins the matchup, so he got a good PFF grade, and he’s really the worst player on our team at this job description, but he’s really the best with PFF.
So, when those two things came up, DVOA, PFF, where you’ve got to be good at, all that stuff, you’ve got to be better in the football games and we’ve done a good job of that. But we’ve got our hands full, man, it’s not going to get easier.”
For the record, Fipp’s special teams unit currently ranks sixth overall in PFF’s special teams grade.